Color Wheel Sweatshirt

I decorated two sweatshirts nearly eight years ago.  There's a third one a few years older.  They're all getting rather worn around the edges.  I'm certainly not the neatest person, so there's some... um... additional color added in spots down the front.  They're long overdue to be replaced.  Even though they're really not fit to wear in public, it's hard to part with them.  I love them.

On the other hand, new sweatshirts!  Two chances to play.  I discovered a really neat paper pieced swirly dresden pattern months ago, but hadn't had an excuse to use it.  I thought it would look great on the navy sweatshirt.  I shrunk it down to roughly a six-inch circle and printed it to freezer paper.  Because I wanted the jersey to show through like the glory boxes shirt, I numbered the slices and cut it into pieces. 

Numbered pieces on original template,
then flipped onto sweatshirt

My first pass through the leftover fabric bag resulted in way more than 15 colors.  As I started whittling them down, I had most of a rainbow color wheel, so I decided to run with that idea.  I went back to the scraps and picked fabrics that flowed best from one color to the next.  I lined them up in order, ironed them to the freezer paper, then folded the raw edges under and stitched them in place.  Lots of ironing; some frustration with stitching down the tiny points.  At this point I wasn't convinced I would get my idea to work.

I placed them down on the paper copy of the pattern, placed my square ruler over it and flipped it on top of the sweatshirt.  That actually looked pretty good!  I needed to replace two wedges:  a green that had too much yellow, the other that went from green-to-blue when I needed it to go from blue-to-green.

Once I determined I had the right colors, I removed the freezer paper, ironed them again, then sprayed the backs with iron-on adhesive (I love my 606 spray!).  Now, how to get them onto the sweatshirt?  I cut around the inside and outside edges of the original paper template and basted the pieces in place along the edges of the template, adhesive-side out.  Now I could position it as a single piece.  Once I placed it where I wanted, I fused it on, cut the basting, pulled off the paper.

Voila!

Last step was to hand stitch them in place.  The yellow pieces don't have the sharpest inside points, but overall the two circles look pretty round.  I'm quite pleased with how it looks (and its way better in person).

I like this pattern.  I will need to do a full-sized one at some point.  Or even this sized, pieced together as a normal quilt block.  Ooh - I bet it would make a cute mug rug!

Sharing with Freemotion by the River's Linky Tuesday.